Sunday, 4 July 2010

Do You Think She Saurus?

There's a fantastically bad joke, most famously featured in "Jurassic Park", and it goes like this:

Q: What do you call a one-eyed dinosaur?A: Do-you-think-he-saurus!

Nearest and dearest will know that, at the start of May, we lost our other little leopard gecko, Hastur The Unspeakable. We discovered that both she and Mokele had in all likelihood had cryptosporidiosis, which is pretty much a terminal condition. Their deaths opened up a big hole in our lives, and we knew we had to get another gecko soon. Via the Reptile Forums UK rehoming page, we found a little girl.

She was perfectly healthy except that she was missing one eye. As the rescuers didn't know if this was congenital or not, they were only prepared to rehome her to owners who wanted a pet rather than a breeder. Which is where we came in.

This is Dooya, short for Dooya Thinkshesaurus. We think she's about two years old, and she's fighting fit (although she does have a pretty decent pinworm infection right now). In contrast to her predecessors, she is packing in the food. She's putting on about 2g a week, and has plenty of junk in the trunk.

She has worked out what feeding time looks like, and watches Paul as he delves in the giant sack-o-locusts we ordered from Pets Or Meat, tracking the tongs. She licks her lips very frequently, helping to pass chemicals to her Jacobson's organ. She yawns, which is both adorable and annoying, as it's perfectly possible for us to catch the yawn from her, but she's immune to catching it back from us. And today she got a little attack of hiccups - no mean feat for an animal that I didn't think had a diaphragm!

Term ended on Friday, so blogging may resume more frequently. I have a few things to talk about, so it might be sooner rather than later. But now it's time for more gecko love.